I recently ran across a helpful way of describing preaching. It’s in an essay by D. A. Carson in Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching in Honor of R. Kent Hughes (Crossway, 2007). In his essay, “Challenges for the Twenty-first-century Pulpit,” Carson encourages preachers to think of preaching in terms of “re-revelation.”
Carson explains: “Perennially we read [in the Scriptures], ‘The word of the Lord came to such-and-such a prophet.’ So when that Word is re-announced, there is a sense in which God, who revealed himself by that Word in the past, is re-revealing himself by that same Word once again.” Carson argues that preachers must bear this in mind, making their aim more than explaining the Bible. He writes: “They [preachers] want the proclamation of God’s Word to be a revelatory event, a moment when God discloses himself afresh, a time when the people of God know that they have met with the living God.”
This raises the stakes, doesn’t it?! If my role as a preacher is to be a spokesperson through whom God reveals himself in a fresh way to His people, then this calls for a certain level of urgency and intensity as I study the text, pray over and through the text, and wrestle with what the Spirit is saying to me and to the people with whose care I have been entrusted.
Pastors, our task as we preach this weekend and beyond is to re-reveal the living God. What a calling! What a privilege! What a responsibility! What a message! What a Savior and God!
Posted by Steve Mathewson at 8:08 AM on November 23, 2007
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Amen. Thanks for sharing Carson's insights. Peace.
Posted by: Milton Stanley on November 26, 2007